Rob Shallenberger: Hello, friends, and welcome back to the Becoming Your Best Podcast. This is Rob Shellenberger, and I’m excited that you’re able to join us today and that we have the chance to visit for a few minutes. I wanted to talk just briefly on this podcast about something that applies to every one of us, and that is your legacy, our legacy. In other words, what legacy are we leaving for the world? 

  

In seminars I’ve talked a little bit about legacy before. Probably 97% of people actually care about their legacy. I have had people raise their hand and say, “You know, I just don’t even care.” I’m confident that there is nobody on this podcast that that is the case with, that everyone who’s listening to this cares about the legacy that you’re leaving. And I love what Maya Angelou said, she said that “People won’t remember what you said, or what you did, what they’ll remember is how you made them feel.” And that’s the essence of leaving a great legacy, a legacy of greatness. 

  

When you think about your legacy, that can come in different forms – as a leader in an organization, it could be as a parent, certainly your legacy will live on in your children if that applies to you. So, how do you want people to look back and think of you? And your legacy, as it comes to that, let me ask you a few introspective questions, just something to think about as you look back at your life, right now, with where you are today. Let me just ask you four or five quick questions. These are great introspective questions I’ve been thinking about them throughout the morning, and I invite you to do the same with an open mind. 

  

So, here’s a few of them: First of all, are you happy with where you are right now financially? Are you happy with your relationships – your family, your friends, your co-workers? Are you happy with your relationships? Are you happy with your health? Are you happy with the direction into your life, right now with where you’re going? If you answered no to any of these questions, then my following question would be, what needs to change? In other words, if you’re not happy with where you are in one of those areas – finances, relationships health, your direction – what needs to change? And in this podcast, although it will be short, I want to give you and share with you a little bit of direction, that’s been very powerful for me and I’ve seen it help thousands of people around the world. So, the hope of this is that this can be inspiring, motivating, and really help you maybe get some direction in your life that would apply to one of those key areas, if you answered, “No.” 

  

And so, let’s talk about what that can be. You hear us say this all the time on these podcasts, and that is something like, “The 12 Principles! Go back to the 12 Principles!” And it’s true. However, having said that many times what I’ve realized along the way, is that sometimes that may seem like a broad statement. You know, the 12 Principles, well, what are they? Because if we say the 12 Principles, then sometimes we’re not thinking about what they are at an individual level. 

  

And so, one of my first and most powerful invitations on this – and I say powerful, because I’m in the process of doing this myself – is to encourage you to read Becoming Your Best: The 12 Principles of Highly Successful Leaders, at least one time a year. And as you do that, do a self-evaluation on each principle. And I realized, things happen, life happens. That’s why we’re encouraging you to read this book, once a year. Make it a staple of your life! These 12 Principles are very predictive of success, we know that. They’re powerful, they’re eternal, they transcend culture. So, being that they are so predictive of success, it is good to come back once a year, read the book and do a self-evaluation on each principle. In that way, when you or we or I or whoever it might be, says, go to the 12 Principles, that’s not a vague statement. We can actually internalize every one of them and do a self-evaluation check with number one, number two, number three, number four, and see where we’re at. 

  

Let me give you an example of why this can be so powerful just reading the book and doing that evaluation against each one of those principles. A couple of reasons: Number one, those tie directly into all of those questions I just asked – finances, health, relationships, direction. Number two is it’ll keep us back in line with what works. In the last couple of weeks – I’ll say more than met – talked with two people who are going through a midlife crisis. And this is where this thought process started to come from. As they’re talking, I’m just doing the self-evaluation, both internally and for them on the principles – each one of the principles. And they are powerful and helping us move along. 

  

I mean, so here’s another example of this. I was just with a company for two days yesterday, they’ve been working with Becoming Your Best now for almost four years, it’s a great organization! One of the gentlemen who was there had a son that had recently gone through a divorce. He said, “Man, I just finished the 12 Principles. Reading the book, I saw my son going through this divorce, and realized how powerful these principles would be.” Because he commented that his son was in this funk, it really flipped his life upside down, which I think we can all understand. So he gave the book to his son, and as soon as his son had finished the book and read through the principles, he said, “Man, he just came alive again, the fire was back in him. He realized that life wasn’t over for him and he took control again of his life and he started to lead his own life again.” But it wasn’t until he read the book, and did this evaluation of each principle on where he was, and realizing that he obviously wasn’t where he wanted to be, he took control, and started applying the principle to not only the present but his future, and that’s when it started to change. 

 

So that’s where it gets exciting for us. And I was really grateful he shared that comment. I gave this guy a hug and said, “Thank you for sharing that!” Because, there are times you wonder, “Is this making a difference? That little voice of self-doubt creeps into all of our minds, and I was very appreciative of his comment. 

  

And the principles do work. So let me just give you an example of three of these and how I’ve thought about these just over the last few days, and I’ll invite you to do the same. Think about how these principles resonate with you. So, let’s just talk about, “Be True to Character.” I was driving up the canyon this morning, as I was coming into our office, and I was just evaluating my own life, “Rob, are you true to character? Are you honest in all that you do, in the small things and the big things?” Okay, good question! It’s a pretty high bar to set. When you say, you know, even in the small things, the little white lies, well, I’m trying to do the self-evaluation, holding myself up to that standard. It even goes deeper than that, though. I started asking, “When you say something, do you do it, Rob?” In other words, when you give someone a verbal commitment, do you follow through and do what you said you would do? Well, again, that’s a fairly high bar to set for a lot of us. 

  

Another principle, the second one is to “Lead with a Vision.” This is a great one to hold ourselves up to and introspectively ask, how are we doing? And if you think about your vision, right now, go back to those questions – financially, relationships, health, direction – are those things in line with your vision? And think about this, here’s a different spin on vision. When you think about your personal vision – and I’ve shared this before – it’s a little bit like writing your dash, you know, simplicity. There’s a little book out that talks about your dash, it’s a great little book to get, and I can’t remember where it’s at, or at what website, but if you search for “your dash”, you can find this. The point is that if you go to any cemetery and you look on the headstones, most of them will have a birth date, a death date, and then, in the middle, is the dash. And each one of us, as we have the chance to wake up in the morning, we’re writing our dash, we’re writing our life’s script right now, we’re writing and living our legacy. And so, what does that vision look like? And is your current life in line with that? Are you writing the dash that you would be proud of, that you would want other people to be able to talk about in a positive way, your children, your co-workers, etc? 

  

So, thinking about that this morning, I have my roles pretty well-defined, I have a vision for each role. And then, the question was, am I in line with that vision? So, for example, in the role of spouse – my wife’s name is Tanya – the vision is that I am a kind and caring husband, who always helps Tanya feel like a 10. I’m totally faithful in thought and action, and I constantly strive to serve her, compliment her and be the husband of her dreams. Well, as I’m thinking about that, I’m thinking, “You could do better, Rob! There are some places where you could do better, even in those small little simple actions.” And so, it started to raise my internal bar and put me in the driver’s seat as to what I could do to improve our relationship and take what’s good and make it even better. 

  

And so, that’s what it can do as you start to hold your life up to the Principle. So, number one, “Be True to Character”; number two is a Vision. Think about those, and that’s why you read the book. As you go through each one of those principles, it allows you to self-evaluate how you’re doing, and that should create a very empowering feeling. Rarely do people read the book and get discouraged because Becoming Your Best is about putting you in the driver’s seat so that you can do something to impact your own life and move forward. 

  

Let’s go to Principle number seven, “Be an Effective Communicator”. Here’s how this has resonated in my own life, just in the last few months, as I’ve done this self-evaluation, putting myself up to the principle and saying, “Where am I at?” So, one of the things that you see in high performers and great leaders is that they focus on becoming great communicators. That obviously applies to speaking; you have two ears and one mouth for a reason, so it certainly applies to listening. And that’s where I think most of us have a lot of areas for improvement, is in the listening side, especially with the people close to us in our lives – spouse, children, close friends, family, and co-workers. That’s where it seems to be more difficult, is the closer we are to someone emotionally. 

  

So, recently, over the last few months, I felt myself with my son, Robbie, getting fairly directive. He’s a senior in high school, I mean, this is crunch time, he’s got University applications coming in, you know, you hit these deadlines, and certain doors are going to close – you either keep the door open, or you close the door. And so, it’s kind of an important time, and I’ve started to get more directive with him, like, “Hey, Robbie, do this, do this, do this.” And most of us, when we actually step back and look at it, part of human nature is we don’t like to be told what to do and when to do it and have someone riding us. And so, by nature, he’s been getting a little defensive over the last few months, and I think that’s exactly what most of us would probably do. And I’ve just been thinking a lot, “Man, he’s not happy with this, I’m not happy with this, what needs to change?” Well, I could wait for him, or I could self-evaluate against the principle, “Be an effective communicator”. That puts me back in the driver’s seat to say, “Rob, what are you going to do to improve the communication?” 

  

So, as you read the book, those who read the book, you’re going to see in chapter seven, a way to bring up difficult issues. And this is powerful, it’s so simple, but it works. And that is, to ask this question, “What are your thoughts?” Or, “I’ve been thinking about X, and I’d like to get your thoughts on this or your thinking.” In other words, rather than getting directive and telling someone what to do, we’re putting the ball in their court, to be able to have some agency and express their opinions, their thoughts as part of communication. And this isn’t easy to do when we’re out of the habit of doing it. 

  

So with Robbie, I think I had slipped out of the habit, I had become more and more directive and frustration had risen on both sides. And so, I walked in the room and just very consciously asked, “Hey, Robbie, I’ve been thinking about your application to the university, and just wanted to get your thoughts on where things are, and just what your thoughts are on the application.” And it was amazing because just watching him right there. I saw this calm come over his demeanor, and he turned around, and he said, “Yeah, I’ve been thinking about it. I probably have to do this, and this, and this.” Those are the very things I would have told him to do, had I rewound the clock two or three weeks prior. Now, he’s the one talking about doing them. So my response was, “Yeah, those are great thoughts, Robbie! What are your thoughts on when you might do those?” And again, he’s the one who starts to answer the question, “Well, I could probably work on this tonight.” But you see how, all of a sudden, applying the principle, and evaluating myself against that principle changed our relationship for the better. I’ll tell you, over the last two to three weeks, it’s not done 100% yet, but I have been so much more at peace. He’s been at peace. Our relationship is improving in better, far better than where it was even just two weeks ago, over this one issue of the university applications and scholarships. And so that’s the power of the principle. 

  

And I’ll just give you one more example of holding ourselves against the principle and saying, “Where are we?” And again, the whole point and intent of this podcast is to invite you to go back and read the book; go through every single one of the principles and evaluate yourself right now on where you’re at, to the principle. So, if we go all the way to Principle 10, which is to “Apply the Power of Knowledge”, great leaders, high-performers, have a constant thirst for knowledge. Elon Musk reads one to two books per day; Warren Buffett – 80% of his time, he invests reading. So there’s a very strong correlation to reading and success, you know, being motivated. 

  

So if you’ve been a follower of our podcast for any amount of time, you’ve heard us say this in previous podcasts: Well, you know, all of us are very similar in certain ways, and it’s like a roller coaster, there are certain times we’re on highs, and then we come down a little bit lower, and we go through a high. We get that! Life is not always on a high. So, again, why do we come back to the principles? To move us back to the high! 

  

Well, I remember, just three or four months ago, I started to feel a little bit of a low coming in, a little bit of complacency. And just that feeling of, “Oh, man, something’s not quite right.” You don’t feel as motivated to get up and go work out – in my case, do CrossFit or run – and I think most people listening to this can relate to that, where you just don’t quite feel that mojo, the motivation. Well, I started to hold myself against the principles. And I looked at them, and I got to this one, and I thought, “Man, you know, other than the Scriptures, I haven’t really read any other books for a little over two weeks.” And normally, my focus is a chapter a day in some book. And I realized it had been almost two weeks. Now, I could have made excuses saying that, “Yeah, I was on the road, I was on the plane, I was doing these different events, keynote seminars, I just was busy.” But those are simply that, they’re excuses. 

  

When we’re doing pre-week planning, we can make the time for anything that matters most. And so, the reality was, I just simply hadn’t been doing it for two weeks. And even after that short amount of time, I had felt the momentum start to slide, the motivation was sliding. And so, I picked it back up. I started to read just a chapter that day. Within a day or two, just instantly, the motivation started to come back, the power started to flow, the mind started to go again. And so, it’s these little habits that can have a big impact on our lives when we focus on them. And because life happens, that’s why it’s so important to come back and look at each one of the 12 Principles. This is what your legacy is all about. Hold yourself against every one of these principles and evaluate where you’re at. Because I promise, once we have a clear vision, we’re resolute in our character, and we come back to that over and over again, we have a plan, we prioritize our time, we treat people right, and we start working towards these things, it’s amazing what will materialize in our relationships, in our finances, in our health, in the way we feel about our direction – it all will improve across the board. It’s kind of like the old saying, “What comes first? The chicken or the egg? Well, I don’t really know, but what happens is when we do apply the principles, success, and happiness follows. It’s like the night – day. There’s a very predictable pattern to that. 

  

So, the invitation here is a couple of things from this podcast: Number one, read Becoming Your Best again. This is not a one-time read, this is a book that I encourage you to put on the shelf that you come back to every year. Make this one of your staple books, and come back to it year after year, after year again, and evaluate yourself on the principles and then make the necessary adjustments. 

  

The second invitation is to take this up a notch, and that is to share it with a friend. You know, I was inspired by this person who I talked about earlier in the podcast, this father, who saw his son going through the divorce, his son was in the funk and he shared the book. The book became the catalyst to make the changes. He started to look at the principles and it really fired him up, it totally shifted his mindset, as he applied the new skill set. So share Becoming Your Best with someone important in your life – it could be your co-workers, it could be a son or daughter, a spouse, a friend, share it with someone. I know that you know someone who you can make a difference in their life by simply sharing it. Very easy to do. 

  

So, those are two invitations. Number one, read the book; number two, share it with someone else. Apply the principles and think about your legacy in the context of the principles. Because in the end, tomorrow’s not guaranteed for any single one of us, and at some point, that debt day it’s going to show up there and the ability to write our dash, at that point, is over. So, this is the time to make hay, not postponing anything that’s important to us. This is the time, this is the day, and that is the entire spirit of Becoming Your Best. 

  

We love you, we’re grateful for your friendship, wherever you’re at in the world. We know there are people listening to this from Saudi Arabia, Romania, South Africa, Russia, throughout the United States, Canada, South America, the Philippines. So, wherever you’re at, thank you for being a part of this movement, because that’s how we view this. And you’re really the catalyst that’s going to impact other people’s lives. The principles are powerful, and we’re grateful for your friendship, and we hope you have a fabulous week! 

Rob Shallenberger: Okay, welcome back to our Becoming Your Best podcast listeners, wherever you’re at in the world. We consider you to be our family and our friends and we’re so grateful that you’re taking the time to invest in this today. This is actually a really important podcast. Before I introduce Steve, this is something that I’ve become much more aware of – and I’ll get into what that is, here in the podcast – but this is a topic I’ve become much more aware of over the last few months and years and how pervasive not only Diabetes is, but what we eat and put into our bodies and how that impacts us in so many different ways.  

 

Rob Shallenberger: This is going to be a very eye-opening podcast. These are not things that I knew about a year ago and a lot of these are going to be new for our listeners and will impact you in many different ways – whether this is something that reaches you directly or whether it’s a family member or a friend – this is going to have an impact on everybody who’s listening to this podcast. So, this is going to be a fun one. It’s going to open some eyes and really cause us to think. 

  

Rob Shallenberger: So, with that being said, I want to introduce our guest, Steven Cherrington. He is a close personal friend, he’s been a doctor for decades. Great, great man, involved in so many different endeavors in our community and making a difference. He’s been a coaching client of ours for two years and I just really had the chance to get to know him on a personal level and he is truly a great man, a man of character at, really, every level – personal, in his relationships, with the practice he started. He is one of the founders of Premier Family Medical – it’s a conglomerate of doctors that are just an amazing group of people and I had a chance to meet with most of those doctors a few months ago. 

  

Rob Shallenberger: Steve is really one of the pioneers, I’ll call it, in a new effort to focus on Diabetes. So, we’re going to talk a little bit about that, and not just Diabetes but the impact that our food and what we eat and everything else has on our body. So with that being said as a very brief introduction, Steve, first of all, welcome to the podcast! 

  

Steven Cherrington: Thank you, Rob. I’m so happy to be here! This is actually my first time, but I’m really excited to get going and do this. I get a little bit animated, so I have to warn you about this topic. I get a little excited. My staff at my office sometimes have to open the doors and pull me out when I’m talking to patients about this. 

  

Rob Shallenberger: For our listeners, there’s a reason he gets excited about this. You will, too, as this podcast goes on when you hear what he has to say, especially for those who have already been touched by this disease. So, Steve let’s get into this. Walk us through, for our listeners’ sake, how you got up to this point and not only a little brief glimpse into your background, but why we’re talking about what we’re talking about on this podcast, which is Diabetes, what we eat, the impact that it has on our life, especially as we age and grow older. How did you get to this point? 

  

Steven Cherrington: So, a little bit about how I got here was I’ve been practicing family medicine for 25 years now. Over the years, I realized that I became somewhat complacent and just kind of following the norms and giving medications like most doctors do or like I had learned to do and treating illnesses, I guess, just like everybody does. And I noticed with several conditions – and I’ve been practicing for a while, so I think anyone in their career gets to the point where they think, “Okay, what more can I do?” And when I became a coaching client that became even more ingrained in me. What more can I do? How can I make a bigger difference? And that came down to deciding on a few conditions that had always given me issues during my practice, things that I hadn’t known what to do. People would come in and they’d say, “Hey, I have this. Can you help me with this?” And I would say, “I don’t know” or I would put them off or give them a referral that I didn’t know really if it would help them. 

  

Steven Cherrington: So I chose three conditions. Over the years I have begun to develop things to be able to treat those effectively. The first one actually was a drug addiction. I had people come in and they were addicted to prescription pain medicines or heroin or something. This would kind of sit there. I didn’t know really what to do. So I developed a program to do that. The next was obesity and developed a program to treat that and to make me feel comfortable that I was actually helping someone. And then, that has gone into treating Type 2 Diabetes and doing it differently and making people think about what really is Type 2 Diabetes and how should we be treating it, not based on what the pharmaceutical companies are telling us is the way to treat it, but how we should be treating it – reversing the condition, the reason, the way that it happened, we’ve got to reverse it, not just make it worse and we’ll get into more of that, I hope. 

  

Steven Cherrington: And this is very important! So, Diabetes Mellitus is what the condition is called. I don’t know if it’ll be interesting to anyone but Diabetes means siphon and Mellitus means sweet. They thought that urinating was siphoning and way back, they would actually taste the urine and it tasted sweet. So it became the name Diabetes Mellitus. I don’t know if that’s here or there, but it does affect so many people. It’s thought that in the world there are probably 500 million people that have Diabetes. Interestingly, 46% of those people don’t know they have it. So if you look at 10% of all people, is what it’s thought have it, if 10% have it, then probably, I don’t know, actually 50-60-70% of people, maybe 100% of people know someone or have someone in their family or somehow is affected by this disease. 

  

Rob Shallenberger: And that, Steve, is a great introduction to this as you and I have gotten the chance to visit about this a lot. One of the things that’s become very quickly apparent and I really didn’t know this, prior to these discussions with you, was – and we’ll get into these in a lot of detail – but this is why this applies to every one of our listeners and I would invite you as a listener to share this with the people who matter most in your life. Share this podcast, send it to them in an email, send them a text with this link because what I’ve learned about this is that this is not like a light switch. Steve, you just mentioned, what percentage of people did you say don’t even know that they have it currently? 

  

Steven Cherrington: Is thought to be 45-50% of people have Diabetes, but they don’t know it. 

  

Rob Shallenberger: So, on that point, what I’ve learned about this is that this is something that slowly develops over time in many cases and there are a huge number of things that we can do right now, wherever we’re at in our life, to stem this off, to pivot away from it and prevent it from showing up in our lives or, even once diagnosed with it – this is what’s exciting about this podcast – there are ways to treat it that are so different than the ways that it has been treated up to this point. So this is a podcast for everyone! We invite you to share this because it’s going to touch a lot of people. 

  

Rob Shallenberger: Another one of our coaching clients, I won’t share a name, but he just found out last week that he has Type 2 Diabetes. He went to the emergency room. He was drooling, if I understood correctly, at one side of his mouth. They didn’t know what was going on and that really shook his world. And so, I’m actually going to connect him and Steve, surely, so they can have a good discussion on this. But the point is, this is a podcast for everyone. It’s not someone who has been diagnosed and is now trying to solve it. This is for everyone. So with that being said, Steve, let’s start from the beginning! What is Diabetes? I mean, you hear Type 1, Type 2. What does that mean? 

  

Steven Cherrington: Okay. First of all, I’m just going to interject something. That story you just told about your other coaching client – if I had a nickel for every time I had heard that same story, I could retire because that’s how it happens all the time. And there are so many signs that happen before and the reality is this is not that hard to treat before it happens and even early on after someone’s diagnosed. 

  

Steven Cherrington: But getting to your question, there’s Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes. Type 1 Diabetes is a complete failure of the pancreas in each of our bodies, to produce insulin. Now, insulin is really what we’re going to be talking about. It’s hugely important! When we hear insulin we think, “Oh, yeah, I know someone that gives themselves a shot of insulin.” Well, yeah, they do, but the reality is our bodies produce insulin and really keep us alive. People with Type 1 Diabetes, they have to take insulin or they die. So, really we are not talking about Type 1 Diabetes here. We are specifically talking about Type 2 Diabetes. 

  

Steven Cherrington: Now, every patient that I counsel on this, I ask them, “Do you know what Type 1 is? Do you know what Type 2 is? And everybody has kind of an idea, they say, “Type 1 – you get that when you’re a kid, you have to take insulin; Type 2 – your pancreas just isn’t making enough insulin or you’re insulin resistant.” But I’m going to explain what Type 2 Diabetes is because it’s really, really important and it’s completely the opposite. Sometimes, I actually think that maybe it shouldn’t even be called Diabetes. I mean, they should have two separate names because they are so different. 

  

Steven Cherrington: In Type 2 Diabetes, the cells in the body that need to absorb glucose to be able to function, to be able to get energy, they become resistant to the effects of insulin. If you think of a key and a lock – insulin is the key that opens the lock, so that glucose can go into the cell. If glucose doesn’t go into our cells, we die. And so, if we don’t have insulin then that, like I said, was Type 1 Diabetes. Type 2 Diabetes – we have insulin, but the cell is resistant to that insulin. The effect is almost the same as not having any, but the cell is resistant. And some goes in and, as we’ll talk a little bit later, the body has a way of compensating for that insulin resistance of each cell. So, really, Type 2 Diabetes is insulin resistance of our cells and it’s not really a lack of insulin. 

  

Steven Cherrington: This is kind of fascinating because it is one of those times where you can say that Type 2 Diabetes is a lack of insulin. If someone says, “Is it a lack of insulin?” You say, “Yeah, it’s a lack of insulin.” And then, if you say, “It’s too much insulin?”, “Yes, it’s actually too much insulin also.” So it’s kind of the dichotomy that’s fascinating. 

  

Rob Shallenberger: Okay. Yes, a little difference! Obviously, Type 1 is something that’s a true, true – and I don’t want to say Type 2 is not a true medical condition – like you said, they’re two completely different things. There is a prescribed approach to Type 2, you’re now going to suggest a very different way to treat Type 2 than has been done in the past. So, two questions: Number one, what leads people up to getting Type 2 Diabetes? Because Type 1 is something more that happens, like you said. Type 2 is something that builds over time, it seems like, and people develop Type 2 Diabetes. So, number one, how does that happen? And how has it been treated in the past? Because we’re going to focus through the rest of this podcast on how to treat it with this new exciting approach that you’re talking about that can actually heal people from it, but I want to get into how it has been treated traditionally so that we can see the alternative. So number one, how do people typically develop Type 2 Diabetes? And then, number two, how has it been treated in the past? 

  

Steven Cherrington: I typically sketch this out and it helps my lack of words sometimes, but I’m going to describe it in words. If you think of a cell in the body and we’ll just think of one cell as being our whole body, okay? That cell has to have insulin to survive, to be able to bring energy or glucose into that cell. Well, because of multiple factors that aren’t terribly important right now, but that cell becomes resistant to the effects of insulin. So it’s just as the body will start producing – from reasons that we’ll talk about – will start producing too much insulin, which makes the cell resistant. It’s no different than, let’s take someone that has become addicted or dependent on opioid medications. We know if they take one pill, then they feel the effects of it. But over time, the body becomes resistant and they have to take more, and more, and more, and more. With my experience in treating drug addiction, I’ve never ever heard of anyone who was on one dose and their body didn’t become resistant and they needed more, and more, and more. The cells in the body are no different from this. 

  

Rob Shallenberger: So would it be true to say – and then you can get into how it’s treated because I know you’re going to get into a lot of details after this. 

  

Steven Cherrington: Yeah. 

  

Rob Shallenberger: Would it be true to say that one of the primary contributors to this increased production of insulin would be diet, lack of exercise things like that? 

  

Steven Cherrington: Exactly where I was going! So, every time we put something in our mouths and we eat, the body produces insulin. If we’re doing that way too much and doing it way too frequently, then insulin increases and it stays elevated all the time. It’s not any different from the person who is taking too many opioids and is becoming resistant. The body becomes resistant from the insulin that they’re giving themselves, that the pancreas produces, because of eating. And really it’s not so much how much eating, it’s more a factor of how often eating. We’re continually giving our body insulin by us eating, then that’s where the resistance comes from. The body will then say, “Oh, I need more insulin!” The pancreas says, “Okay” or “I need more glucose.” The bloodstream has a lot of glucose in it and that glucose needs to get into the cell, but the cell is saying, “No, we can’t have any more glucose.” And so, the pancreas says, “Oh, I know how I can make you get more glucose into the cell. I’ll make more insulin!” And then, that process just keeps building, building, building, until the pancreas can’t make any more insulin to get the glucose into the cell. 

  

Rob Shallenberger: Which literally becomes a death spiral. 

  

Steven Cherrington: Absolutely! It just goes down, and down, and down from there. 

  

Rob Shallenberger: So with that as the foundation, how has it been treated in the past? 

  

Steven Cherrington: Perfect question! So, as our pancreas gets to the point where it can’t produce any more insulin, we continue to eat and glucose continues to enter the bloodstream, you go to the doctor, they test your blood sugar, it’s high, we say “You’re diabetic!” And so, we begin to put you on medications. Those medications traditionally are pills. We start with pills. Well, what do all these pills do? All these pills tell the pancreas to make more insulin. 

  

Rob Shallenberger: Furthering the death spiral. 

  

Steven Cherrington: Furthering the spiral. It just makes it worse and worse. So then, the person gets one pill, the body makes more insulin, but then the body becomes more resistant. He goes back to the doctor a few months or a year or two years – it’s usually not that long – and needs another pill because the body has become more resistant. The pill is given, the pancreas makes more insulin and then the body becomes more resistant. I mean, you can see where I’m going here, and it’s more, and more, and more pills. Then, traditionally what is done is, when all the pills are exhausted, because everybody is resistant to actually be put on insulin – so when the pills are exhausted and they’re just not working anymore, which it always happens – in 25 years I’ve never ever seen anyone get better from Type 2 Diabetes. They continually need more medications. 

  

Rob Shallenberger: In the traditional approach, the old approach. 

  

Steven Cherrington: In the traditional approach, right. So, when those pills are exhausted, the person goes to the doctor, still not under control, and then, the doctor gives insulin. Well, there’s no limit to the harm I can cause when I’m giving insulin to a Type 2 diabetic because I can give them as much as… I mean I have had patients that are 150 – 200 of insulin per day. Now, not everybody knows how much that is, but that’s a lot. So, I continue to give more, and more, and more insulin and the person becomes more, and more, and more resistant. 

  

Rob Shallenberger: So it’s just prolonging the fight. So with that being the old way, which it sounds frustrating, it is frustrating and for anyone who’s experienced this, is certainly frustrating. So what’s the switch that has flipped? There’s been a big difference in the way you’re approaching this now versus the traditional approach. Talk about the impact that, number one, that has had on your patients, your current patients and what is that approach? 

  

Steven Cherrington: So, right now, I have well over 100 patients. 

  

Rob Shallenberger: With Diabetes, right? 

  

Steven Cherrington: No, that have switched over. I have way more than that, I just haven’t seen them in the last nine months. So, in the last nine months, everybody that’s come in, I’ve talked to them about this and we’ve changed them to this new approach. And this new approach, we have to think of Type 2 Diabetes as being a dietary problem. We can’t solve the problem with a medication answer. We need to solve the problem with a dietary answer. 

  

Rob Shallenberger: Isn’t the insulin just a treatment of the symptom? It’s like a Band-Aid. 

  

Steven Cherrington: It’s the treatment of the symptom of insulin resistance. 

  

Rob Shallenberger: So, yeah, I’m sorry to interrupt you there, but it’s just such a good point because doctors around the world right now are still following that traditional approach by enlarge. So, this is what we’ve all been waiting for, the new approach. 

  

Steven Cherrington: Yeah, so, when we start to think about it as a dietary problem, then we have to have a dietary answer and what I’m teaching people is this dietary answer. It’s going to sound extremely simple, but it actually is. People do amazingly well, they come off their medications. I’m going to go through the four steps right now of what people need to do to actually stop their medications. 

  

Steven Cherrington: Now, I think that it’s best if someone’s under the care of a physician that does this frequently, to be able to monitor them as they’re coming off their medications because there could be a few little scary things that happen. But the four things, if we look at this dietary-wise: Number one, we need to begin eating fewer times per day. So I teach my patients to eat twice a day. And that’s all! No snacks, no, nothing. Not a fiber bar, not an energy drink, not a shake, not anything and they choose two times per day that they’re going to eat within an eight-hour period and then, between those times, then they have nothing but water. And that means between the eight hours and then the 16 hours that follow, the second meal to the first meal of the next day, if that makes sense. But absolutely no snacking! 

  

Rob Shallenberger: So, you could say, for example, one meal at 10 AM, the next meal at an eight-hour window would be 6 PM, and then nothing until 10 AM the next morning. 

  

Steven Cherrington: Exactly! So I usually tell people, “You choose: it could be 12 and 8, 1 and 9, 10 and 6, 7 and 3”, whatever they want, but an eight-hour period of time, nothing in between. That’s the first thing. 

  

Rob Shallenberger: Can you explain Steve, just briefly, the reasoning why? You explained it to me and I thought that was so valuable to understand the insulin spikes and it comes back down. 

  

Steven Cherrington: Absolutely! So the reason why is because, as we talked about earlier, every time we eat, our pancreas makes insulin and if we don’t have insulin, like we said, we die. So we’re eating twice a day, the insulin goes up and it spikes usually with the regular meal, it goes up for six hours and then comes back down. Then, eight hours later, we do that again, we eat and insulin goes up and comes back down. And so, instead of having insulin elevated from eating all day long and snacking, like sometimes we’re told to do – eat six to eight small meals a day – well, that’s increasing the insulin six to eight times per day. Here, we’re doing it twice. So, we’re helping get rid of the high insulin levels that we have all day long, which helps get rid of the resistance. 

  

Rob Shallenberger: And this was new to me, Steve, because what you were talking about there, when you illustrated this for me when we were together, is traditionally, what many people do is, yeah, they just snack – and I say they, but I should say we – we eat throughout the day. And so, if you were to map the insulin, it’s basically staying spiked all the time, hence why the cells are developing this resistance to it. And so, ultimately leading to Type 2. There’s never this chance for the insulin to come back down versus what you’re suggesting, it can spike, but then it comes back down and there’s a reprieve. 

  

Steven Cherrington: Right. 

  

Rob Shallenberger: So now we’re lowering that resistance. 

  

Steven Cherrington: Correct! And now, the three next steps are further steps to help decrease the resistance. So, the idea here is we’re trying to make our insulin be low for the shortest period of time that we possibly can, so our insulin is way low for the longest period of time. The second thing is, no sugar! I tell them, “You can’t have sugar at all! And you can’t have sweeteners!” And this really works. 

  

Steven Cherrington: I’m going to talk about two and three together because they really have the same effect on the body. Number three is no white flour. Now, the problem with sugar and white flour is that they are so highly refined, that when we eat them and they enter the body and get to the part of the intestine where the pancreas interprets how much insulin should make, it makes way too much insulin. And so, the insulin spikes way too high, higher than with a normal meal and if the insulin spike is too high, then it’s going to take a longer period of time for that insulin to go away. So it’s not just the roughly six hours with a normal meal. 

  

Steven Cherrington: And I use an analogy for this and I think it’s probably okay, but we know that gasoline is highly refined. If we take gasoline and throw it on the fire, well, we obviously know what’s going to happen. You know, it just goes crazy and blows up. It’s the same with our pancreas. It just creates way too much insulin for really the amount of product that we’ve eaten. Okay, so that’s rule two and three. 

  

Rob Shallenberger: So just to bring us up to numbers one, two, three: number one is two meals a day, eight hours apart. 

  

Steven Cherrington: 8 – 16 eating. 

  

Rob Shallenberger: Okay, 8-16 eating. I like that, it’s easy to remember. Number two, no sugars, which obviously that’s going to be a big shift. 

  

Steven Cherrington: Add in there, Rob, too, no sweeteners! It’s hugely important because even saccharin, stevia, all the sweeteners, even honey or agave or all these sweeteners – some of them don’t make the blood sugar go very high, but they really make insulin spike and that’s what we’re trying to prevent. 

  

Rob Shallenberger: And then, number three was it no white flour processed? 

  

Steven Cherrington: White flour! 

  

Rob Shallenberger: Yes, so number three, no white flour. Okay. 

  

Steven Cherrington: If something’s whole grain and it actually says on the label, “This is whole grain”, you know, whatever the grain is, it’s okay, but we have to remember it’s only okay during those two meals. 

  

Rob Shallenberger: So number four! 

 

Steven Cherrington: Number four – one time per week I ask my patients for a period of 24, 36 or 48 hours to fast. So a lot of people look online and it’s called water fasting. So, you can drink water but no food whatsoever. Nothing with any caloric content. 

  

Rob Shallenberger: How about herbal tea or anything like that? 

  

Steven Cherrington: So coffee, tea – those are okay, and sometimes people will do bone broth, I like it, but a lot of people don’t like that kind of thing. That’s okay. No caloric content doesn’t make insulin go up at all. So we stay hydrated during this period of time, but we’re keeping our insulin very low once a week for a prolonged period of time. This is one of the keys to treating Type 2 Diabetes because it makes insulin resistance go away very, very quickly. 

  

Rob Shallenberger: It’s amazing, really! And what kind of success… I mean, this isn’t just something that is a theory at this point. You’ve done this now with many of your patients, so what kind of success have you seen with your actual patients? 

  

Steven Cherrington: So, I have over 100 patients with Type 2 Diabetes so far, in these nine months, that are doing this. I have one patient that we found that had undiagnosed Type 1 Diabetes, so they were being treated as a Type 2 for years and years and when we took them off of their medication, we realized, “Nope, this person is actually a Type 1 diabetic.” That’s one out of over 100. I have two more people that I just have not been able to get control of by stopping their medications. There are some newer conditions and they have a lot of different names and I’m not even familiar with all of them but more or less they call it 1.5 Diabetes, Type 1.5, where the pancreas truly is not producing enough insulin. So, that’s two. We’re talking 2% of the people that I’ve treated so far, we found other reasons that they’re not doing, but everyone else is doing very, very well. The oldest person I have is 85 years old and actually, I don’t know the age of the youngest, but many patients are doing this. 

  

Rob Shallenberger: So basically, up to this point, 97%, let’s just say out of 100, even though there’s more than 100, 97% are off of their medication with this shift, just applying those four steps that you just talked about. It’s amazing! 

  

Steven Cherrington: It’s really astounding! I couldn’t believe it initially! 

  

Rob Shallenberger: What’s been interesting, Steve, is how many doctors are still so skeptical about this. But yet, even some of the peers, you know here in the Valley and other places are starting to see this and say, “What’s going on? How come this is having such a big impact?” And seeing that the traditional approach is certainly not the best approach. I do want to bring up one thing and that is, you know, someone is going to do this and hopefully they will if it applies to them, if they are in a position where they currently have Type 2 Diabetes, that they do do this under the care of a doctor and especially a doctor who understands the things that you’ve talked about. Because there are those 1-2% scenarios where there’s something that maybe is out of the norm. So just to highlight that. 

  

Steven Cherrington: Obviously, there are some caveats and some other things that we are doing small things to make sure that people are staying okay during this phase, as they’re going off their medications – we touch base with them frequently, we have them call us, we call them and make sure they’re comfortable being off their medications. It’s kind of a mindset. People have been told for many, many years that, “Oh, you’ve got to take this medicine, or you are going to die.” So it’s a very foreign concept to think that, “Oh, no! I’m all of a sudden going to come off my medicines.” 

  

Rob Shallenberger: Yeah. It’s a big shift and it works though. I mean the proof is in the pudding, as they say. So, part of this is having the right doctor, someone who understands this and is not totally set in their old ways. One of the things I found when it comes to doctors and pilots and everything else, is they’re not all created equal. With pilots, there are great pilots, there’s a lot of good pilots and then there’s a handful of bad pilots. With doctors, there’s a handful of great doctors, there’s a lot of good doctors and there’s a handful of bad doctors. It’s the same with almost any profession, right? Marketing, sales, the same across the board. 

  

Rob Shallenberger: So if someone’s in this situation or they have a family member or a friend who’s in this situation, and their current doctor is not really helping them, this is a great chance for them to find more information about what you’re talking about there, potentially even find you and talk with you. I know you’re putting together some online courses down the road to help people who aren’t geographically in the same area. So, as we get ready to wrap up this podcast, number one, I’m going to have you share what you have put together, where can people learn more. But before we do that, just as we get ready to wrap up, how did you come across all of this information? I mean, you talked about that pivot point a little bit, you alluded to that. You focused on these three areas, and we’ve only touched on one of those three today. It’d be fun to do another podcast on those other two. 

  

Steven Cherrington: Yeah, that would be interesting. 

  

Rob Shallenberger: But how did you come across this information? Just so people can get a sense of that. 

  

Steven Cherrington: I decided on those three things that had given me trouble throughout my career and one of those I came across the resolution to help with the drug addiction. Just kind of happenstance. I found that and began doing that. With the obesity and the treatment of the Type 2 Diabetes, it actually started when I went to the first Becoming Your Best and we were challenged to read and so I began just reading and I had never been a reader. And I began reading voraciously, sometimes two and three books a month. I think the first year, a year and a half, I would just read everything I could get my hands on. 

 

Steven Cherrington: And I came across some people talking about this kind of thing. And then, as I put a piece from one book and another piece from another book and ideas, and began looking them up online and seeing other people that did this, the world kind of opened up and I go, “Oh wait a minute! There’s a different way to do this, that’s completely different than what pharmaceutical companies have told me for 25 years.” So, I think the short answer to that is reading. 

  

Rob Shallenberger: Isn’t that a powerful habit? I mean, a totally separate podcast, but you’ve heard this quote, these statistics before, as a listener – 43% of college graduates never read another book the rest of their life. And I mean, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. It sounds like had you not started that habit, again, of reading… Man, it can have that kind of impact in anybody’s life, it just fires up the brain! It’s such a powerful habit! So I’m glad you came back to that. And it’s no surprise, things like that happen when we’re reading – it just activates the brain. So Steve, I mean we’ve already been going for 35 minutes, we could go easily for another 35 more, no problem. It feels like we’ve barely scratched the surface on this. So just to summarize here. So, the four things I’ll just use it as the lay terms of a layperson here, so to speak. 

  

Steven Cherrington: Yeah. 

  

Rob Shallenberger: Number one is eating two times a day, with the purpose of spiking the insulin and then having it come back down and be able to reset. Eight hours apart – so 10 to 6, whatever the time is that works for the person, and then not eating again until that next window. So, eight hours in between. 

  

Steven Cherrington: Right! 

  

Rob Shallenberger: Number two is, no sugars, no sweeteners. Three, no white processed bread. If it’s true whole grain, that’s okay. And number four is a weekly fast of 24 to 48 hours – 24, 36 or 48 hours. Are those the four primary things? 

  

Steven Cherrington: That’s the four primary things. And people say, “That’s all I need to do to stop all my medicines?” And I say, “That’s all you need to do. If you’re going to do it, faithfully and with the intent of really getting rid of the Diabetes, that’s all you need to do.” And then we tweak from there. 

  

Rob Shallenberger: Yeah, then there’s obviously scenarios. Well, and that’s where we could talk for a lot longer. This is the baseline, this is the foundation for people to get started. And now, the hope of this podcast is that there’s an awareness, that people know that there’s hope, that they’re not just condemned to this life of taking medicine until they die, that this is something that’s treatable it’s curable and that there’s a way forward out of this. So it’s pretty exciting to anyone that’s touched this. 

  

Rob Shallenberger: And like we started the podcast, you know, if it’s something that hasn’t touched a particular person or family up to this point, there’s a fair chance that it will down the road, and so, what we do with our eating habits now and everything else, will have an impact down the road in helping prevent all of this, so it doesn’t show up in the first place. So, Steve, I know that you’re creating some resources right now, you’re in the process of that to help people, to give them more details on everything we’ve talked about, to go in a lot deeper than the things that we’ve been able to cover on this podcast. So, where could they learn more about this and get some of those resources? 

  

Steven Cherrington: So I’ve realized that, over the past nine months, I talk about this so often during my office visits and many times I don’t have time – the person doesn’t come in for that, so I don’t have time to talk about it. So, I have created these resources where people can go and just get them at any time and you can go to teachable.pfmweightloss.com and it’ll link right to the classes that I have, that teach this in more in-depth, with video and PowerPoint presentations and things. 

  

Rob Shallenberger: So teachable.pfmweightloss.com. Is that right? 

  

Steven Cherrington: That’s correct. 

  

Rob Shallenberger: teachable.pfmweightloss.com. Okay, well, Steve, any parting thoughts? 

  

Steven Cherrington: Well, there is one thing I’m thinking right now. Just two days ago, I had the opportunity that I could have taught this 10 times in the eight hours that I was doing work. People had come in for only five times, so I actually taught it five times but I had the opportunity to teach it 10 times and it’s incredible, I love it because it works. People feel better, people get better. 

  

Rob Shallenberger: Our coaching client, who I know is going to listen to this podcast, I’m going to share it with him. This just rocked his world last week. I mean, completely rocked his world! 

  

Steven Cherrington: Absolutely! 

  

Rob Shallenberger: And this is something that wasn’t even on the radar. And so, boy, when it hits it hits and this is what’s so exciting. I know we’ve said this but it just simply is, this is treatable, it’s curable, there’s a way forward and people don’t have to be condemned to that fate. So, thanks so much for being on this podcast, Steve! A lot of thoughts, deep-thinking is probably occurring in some people’s minds, but what’s exciting is they have a way forward. 

  

Rob Shallenberger: So, thanks to all of our listeners! We hope you have a fabulous day and a great week, wherever you’re at in the world!